Kids shift gears for holidays

LODI - Kristy Benner asked the small group of children encircling a picnic table Thursday at Micke Grove Zoo to think about what an animal might need to do to survive the winter.

Zachary K. Johnson

LODI - Kristy Benner asked the small group of children encircling a picnic table Thursday at Micke Grove Zoo to think about what an animal might need to do to survive the winter.

It was already an hour into the first day of a new winter day camp for children at the zoo, so they could chant in unison the three main options: migrate, hibernate or stick it out.

But the education specialist asked them to think a little more about what an animal would need to do to stick it out.

"Try to dig a deeper den," said 7-year-old Ethan McGuire, who said he had learned earlier that day it was something an animal could do to keep warm during winter.

These kinds of educational day camps are common in the warmer summer months, but to offer mini, two-day camps is something new at the zoo this year, said Allison Meador, the zoo's director of conservation education. The first of three, two-day camps started Thursday. It's for children from age 4 to 12, divided into three groups based on age.

Having camp the day after Christmas can give parents a chance to recover and clean up after the holiday while the kids go to the morning day camp and learn through discovery and hands-on experiences, she said.

Monday is the start of a two-day "zoo detectives" camp, where children solve a mystery using clues like animal tracks left in the mud. It's too late to register for that camp, but there are spots left at a safari of winter habitats that starts Thursday.

But the first camp focuses on adaptations animals have that allow them to survive winter. Campgoers can observe how animals cope with winter - like watching turtles bury themselves in the mud. They also do activities to help them better understand what they are learning. For example, when learning about how heart rates change during hibernation, the children will go to activities to get their blood pumping with some exercise and then try to sit still and "hibernate" to see for themselves the difference, Meador said. "That's always a lot of fun."

Micke Grove Zoo is owned and operated by the San Joaquin County government. But the Micke Grove Zoological Society manages the zoo's educational department and has its sights on managing the whole zoo. For now, it has been trying to reach more zoogoers and supporters across the county while taking a more active role. The new mini camps are part of those wider efforts.

On Thursday, however, the scope was focused on a small group of children, animals and the winter. The kids ate snacks and talked about the ways their homes and lives were the same or different from animals and their habitats.

When it came time to finish snacks and move on to the next activity, Benner asked her group of children to think about coyotes, which avoid detection to survive in the wild. It works for cleaning up after snack time, too.

"Remember, we're coyotes. We don't want to leave any trace," she said.

Contact reporter Zachary K. Johnson at (209) 546-8258 or zjohnson@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/johnsonblog and on Twitter @zacharykjohnson.